BizPlanCompetitions

What is Kauffman Foundation’s iStart?

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is making it easier to administer a business plan competition with its iStart platform, which officially launched yesterday atiStart.org.

The platform provides a set of customizable programs that handle most of the administrative chores required to run a competition: registering applicants and judges, receiving applicants’ business plans, establishing judging criteria, conducting online judging, managing communications with participants and judges, managing deadlines, and monitoring applications and the judging process.

Anyone involved in running a business plan competition will attest to the difficulties involved in keeping everything organized and moving along. Bob Tobin, who is Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Rochester and a judge at the Rochester Regional Business Plan Competition, thinks the platform is the kind of tool the Rochester competition’s chief coordinator, Jackie Spiro, might appreciate. “What amazes me is how many tasks she has to handle in the months leading up to the competition finals.”

iStart passed its first big test with the 2010 Rice University Business Plan Competition, one of the world’s largest and most involved competitions with more than 400 initial applicants and 250 judges. It will now be made available to any organization.

The cost for iStart will vary based on the size of a competition’s prize pool, according to Katie Petersen of the Kauffman Foundation, and will generally run between $500 and $5,000. Many organizers will see that as a very modest investment if it can produce the hoped-for efficiencies and consistency.

iStart offers other functionality as well. For example, competition entrants will be able to post their business summaries online for public view, which can help them gain visibility with potential funding sources.

We hope to see a demo of iStart in the near future and will report back afterwards.

Photo credit: programwitch

Joe Hurley is a CPA, author of "The Best Way to Save for College - A Complete Guide to 529 Plans", founder of Savingforcollege.com, and co-founder of Bizplancompetitions.com. He has also recently started making maple syrup.